How to reduce (or eliminate) echo/reverb

[radiorog]

Hi, all. I recorded a number of interviews with an elderly man in the only room available, which was very live. The resulting tracks have lots of echo/reverb. Is there a way to minimize or even eliminate that echo without buying an expensive plug-in? If not, which plug-in is best for the least money?

Many thanks.

Roger

[Cary B. Cornett]

Sadly, drying out a "wet" track is almost impossible. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard interview segments in radio, TV or film from reverberant spaces. Sometimes all you can do is go with what you got, and try to do better next time. In a really live space, there is no substitute for good mic placement.

[cgrafx]

Hi, all. I recorded a number of interviews with an elderly man in the only room available, which was very live. The resulting tracks have lots of echo/reverb. Is there a way to minimize or even eliminate that echo without buying an expensive plug-in? If not, which plug-in is best for the least money?

Many thanks.

Roger

There is very little that can be done effectively without programs (plugins) specifically designed to do reverse convolution.

- Acon Digital DeVerberate
- Zynaptic Unveil
- SPL De-Verb Plus

Not sure there really is a best plugin, but there are plenty of tutorials/reviews of all of these plugins on youtube.

[MMP]

izotope Deverb is also good. I do run all Izotope plugins 64 bit wrapped with jbridge for SAW.

[Naturally Digital]

There is very little that can be done effectively without programs (plugins) specifically designed to do reverse convolution.

- Acon Digital DeVerberate
- Zynaptic Unveil
- SPL De-Verb Plus

Not sure there really is a best plugin, but there are plenty of tutorials/reviews of all of these plugins on youtube.+1... I've used the SPL De-Verb plugin (https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/spl_de-verb_plus.html), as well as the iZotope processing. At $79, the SPL isn't overly expensive and does a good job.

[Dave Labrecque]

I've used Zynaptiq Unveil. It can help a lot, but typically at the expense of the fidelity of the source. That said, interview- or dialogue-type productions can be fairly forgiving in that regard.

[radiorog]

Many thanks, everybody. Looks like Izotope RX will work best for this. Not perfect, but then I guess northing else is either.

Roger

[Mike Bizanovich]

I used Acon Digital DeVerberate successfully to minimize a very reverberant audio clip of a priest in a large cathedral for a wedding ceremony. We shoot a lot of weddings and it's rare that we can get a priest to wear a lav mic so we're stuck with what we can capture from the house system or from the groom's mic.

[bcorkery]

Like Mike, I was surprised how well Acon Digital DeVerberate worked for the affordability. G'Luck with the process.

-Bill

[MMP]

Though not made for derevereration, SPL Transient Designer sometimes has been just the thing to pull reverb out of certain signals.